Checking Holly Twice, page 5
“I got it.”
Not convincing. Maybe Holly should give her some acting lessons. “Good. Now, you can play for a bit, but then get dried off and put your Christmas pajamas on that Mrs. Knight got you.”
“Okay, I will.”
I left her playing with her rubber ducks and went out to the hallway. From my bathroom came the sound of Dane singing “Jingle Bells” off-key and hopefully scrubbing away all the grime of the day. He’d been out helping me in the barn before we’d gone into town. For better or worse, the kids had become independent and helpful. They were country kids who had a lot of chores. I wasn’t raising any softies, that’s for sure.
I bolted downstairs to see about my guest. My guest who had taken it upon herself to cook dinner for us. My gorgeous guest who had commandeered the kitchen like a professional.
She was bent over a cutting board chopping
“How would you feel about a glass of wine?” I asked. “I still have a few good bottles down in the cellar.”
She turned to me. “Still?”
Holly listened carefully, detecting the truth in the details, including my choice of words. “My brother-in-law and sister were living here before they were killed. Marc was from a wine-making family and had filled our cellar. Do you like white or red?”
“Either. You choose. I’ll check on my sauce.”
I loped down the stairs to the basement cellar. Marc had put wine racks into one corner, and rows and rows of wine remained nearly four years later. If I were smart, I’d have had a wine auction to see if I could raise enough money to keep the house. Somehow, though, the idea of getting rid of Marc’s carefully curated collection seemed wrong.
I ran my fingers over the tops of the bottles. Bottles chosen by Marc to drink with his bride had remained long after the man who’d bought them. The sting of loss almost brought me to my knees. My sister and her husband had been so vitally alive and so very needed by their small children. There wasn’t a day I didn’t think about them or wonder why it had been me left to raise the kids when they were much better equipped to do so. Would they have been able to make this place a success? They had all the attributes I didn’t, including knowledge of food, wine, and hospitality.
I rested my forehead against the wooden rack for a moment until the temporary paralysis left and I could return to the living. Then I trudged up the stairs, wondering what I would ever think to say to the woman waiting upstairs. We had nothing in common. She was of a world I couldn’t even imagine. I wasn’t exactly the best conversationalist, either. I’d always been more comfortable with numbers and sports.
I put all that aside to focus on the task at hand. My brother-in-law had had a wet bar put in the butler’s pantry that connected the kitchen and dining room. Glasses hung upside down above a granite counter. I tugged the cork from the bottle and poured us each a small amount. Typically, I was a cheap beer kind of guy, so I had no idea if this was any good. Holly was rich and probably ate and drank at the finest restaurants. Hopefully, I’d picked out a good one.
Holly was in the living room standing by the window looking out into the darkness. She turned at the sound of my footsteps.
“For the cook,” I said. Even to myself the friendly tone in my voice sounded fake.
“Thank you. I’ve been yearning for a glass since I got here.” She took the glass from my outstretched hand and lowered her nose to take a quick sniff.
“We’re that bad, eh?” I asked, only half joking.
“Not because of you or the kids,” Holly said. “Everything else. The reason for driving north and all that.”
“Right. The wedding.”
“The called-off wedding.” She lifted her glass. “Toast me. For dodging a bullet.”
“Is that how you see it?” I clinked her glass with mine.
Holly tapped her temple. “In here.” She pressed a hand against her heart. “Here, not so much.”
She moved from the window over to sink into one corner of the couch. I joined her on the other end. The fire crackled as the logs shifted.
“It’s so quiet here,” Holly said. “Does it ever feel lonely?”
“Not because of the quiet.” I sipped from my glass. The wine tasted good to me, but what did I know? I watched Holly for clues as she took her first sip, but she didn’t comment with any of the things Marc used to say like: fruit forward, tannins, finishes.
“It must be hard to raise the kids alone.” Holly’s eyes shone from the light cast by the fire. She had eyes that seemed to focus on whatever she was looking at with an intense interest.
I didn’t want to be looked at that closely. Or did I? I’d not had the company of a beautiful woman in a long time. Not since before I’d come home. My former fiancée had not looked at me that way. She’d been busy and twitchy. Never able to focus on anything for long. This woman had a calm serenity that reminded me of the morning after the first big snowfall of the year. Quiet and without imperfections.
Other than her lack of driving skills.
“It is hard to raise them alone, especially for me. I mean, the kids aren’t hard. They’re exhausting but so fun and sweet that it’s worth everything I had to give up when I came back here. This place—keeping up, trying to find a way to keep from losing a home and land that’s been in our family for a hundred years—that’s hard. Especially for me.”
“Why you?” Holly asked.
“Because I have no clue what I’m doing. I’m constantly nervous I’m going to mess up how perfect they started out to be with some inadequacy on my part. My sister was a terrific mom. Marc, my brother-in-law was a great father. They had this vision for their life and their family, and they set out to do exactly that. Then fate intervened.” My throat constricted.
She reached across the sofa as if she were going to touch me but pulled back and took another sip of her wine. “You’re doing something right. The kids are fantastic.”
“They are, aren’t they? I’m trying to keep them here in the country, but it’s not looking good.”
“Is that why you’ve opened it as a bed-and-breakfast?”
“No, it wasn’t my idea. When my mom died, Laney and Marc were the ones who decided to keep the property and turn it into a bed-and-breakfast. They put everything they had and took out a loan against the mortgage to remodel the entire thing. It didn’t used to look like this. Growing up, it was just a regular old farmhouse, not a showpiece.”
“But this was your sister’s dream, not yours?”
“That’s correct.” Impressed by her insight, I spilled the whole story. “When my sister and her husband died, I got the call you never think will come. Our parents were already gone, so it was only her and me. I’d agreed to take the kids if anything happened to them, but I never thought two seconds about it. I never imagined it would actually happen—that we’d lose both of them and that I’d have to step up and take care of the kids and this place.”
“Was it a car accident?”
“Yeah. They were out for the first time since they’d had Ruby. Celebrating their anniversary. I’d talked to my sister earlier that day, and they were excited to be going out. She bragged that she’d lost enough of the baby weight to fit into her little black dress. On the way back from the restaurant, a semi hit them. The authorities said their deaths were instant.” I stopped for a moment to catch my breath. “God, I hate thinking about that.”
“I’m sorry,” Holly said softly. “That must have been a nightmare.”
“I don’t remember much from those first few weeks. I went into survival mode, I guess. I left Vancouver where I worked at an accounting firm and came back here. They were one and four at the time. I knew nothing about kids, let alone babies. Thank God for Mrs. Knight or I would have been screwed. I’d never changed a diaper. Mrs. Knight was my mom’s best friend and our neighbor. She’s been a godsend.”
“You weren’t married, obviously? When all this happened?”
“Right. The girl I was engaged to wasn’t into the idea of an instant family, so she didn’t come with me. Broke off the engagement.”
She made a sound like someone had punched her in the gut. “That must have hurt.”
“It did. All better in the end, though. As you say, I dodged a bullet. I had to make everything as stable as I possibly could for the kids. It’s just been the three of us against the world ever since.
“Here’s to you.” She reached over and clinked my glass once more. “For dodging a bullet.”
“Still, rejection hurts, right?”
“Absolutely.” She groaned softly, which had an unfortunate effect on my libido. I swallowed and looked back at the fire.
“You might be the only person in North America who hasn’t witnessed my humiliation,” Holly added. “Rhett and his new girlfriend haven’t been shy to share photos of their time together in Paris.” Her voice caught, and the rims of her eyes reddened. She sipped from her glass. “I wish it didn’t hurt. I wish I could stop feeling anything. Even for just a damn week during the holidays. I was running from it, you know. Coming up here like this with no plan. A friend told me to go north. I think she might have meant it figuratively, but I took it literally. Got in my new car and headed north on the freeway until I wanted a pretzel and took the exit for Garland Grove.”
“And ran into a lamppost and a grouchy inn owner’s truck?” I asked, teasing.
“Right.” She dropped her face into one hand. “I’m so embarrassed. I never learned how to drive until recently.”
“How come? Around here, we can’t wait to get our licenses. But maybe that’s because we’re country folks who need a car to get anywhere.”
“No time, really. My driver or my mom took me to work and auditions. I never really needed to drive myself.” She dipped her chin for a moment, obviously thinking through something, then shook her head. “No, that’s not right. It just occurred to me—my mother didn’t want me to drive. It gave me too much power.”
“Power over what?” I asked.
“Power over where I went, who I saw. She wanted to make sure I remained employed. I was our moneymaker from the time I was five when I got my first commercial. It’s been the treadmill ever since. She made sure of that.”
“Is that why you’re not with her during the holidays?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she gave me a cold, hard stare that made my stomach flutter with nerves. I’d said something wrong. I had no idea what it could be, but it had given her a stony glint to her eyes. Good job, idiot, I thought. Way to alienate your one and only guest.
5
Holly
Was this man full of it or for real? My mother’s control and misuse of my money had been gossiped about for years. Anyone who went to a grocery store would have seen the headlines on the tabloid rags.
“I said something wrong,” Forest said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. I’m not used to meeting someone who doesn’t have a whole lot of assumptions about me. Things they think they know because of gossip and false reports. Most people know about my toxic relationship with my mother.”
“I don’t. Or anything else about you that you haven’t told me yourself. Is that good or bad?” Forest shifted slightly to drape his arm around the back of the couch.
I gave him a long look, still suspicious. This was the way I had to be, though. I couldn’t trust anyone. I’d thought I could trust Rhett. He’d been the only one I’d thought would never betray me. Turns out, he’d hurt me as much as my mother had. “She still thinks she has a say in my life when she doesn’t. Since I cut her off financially, she tries to manipulate me by talking to the press. Anytime I’ve let my guard down, she’s taken advantage of whatever I was stupid enough to share with her.”
Before he could respond, the kids came barreling down the stairs. “Is dinner ready yet?” Ruby asked. “My stomach is all rumbly.”
Dane placed his hands on the arm of the couch to lean close to me. Smelling of fresh soap and dressed in their flannel pajamas, I wanted to hug them and never let them go.
Instead, I kept my head and rose from the couch. “Let’s check the sauce and make some noodles.” I placed my glass of wine on the table and held out my hand to Ruby. “Would you like to be my helper?”
“Sure!” Ruby skipped ahead of me into the kitchen.
I first lifted the lid from the pot of sauce simmering on the stove. “Would you like to be the taster?”
“Yes, yes.”
I dipped a spoon into the sauce and waited for a second until it cooled before handing it to her.
“Yummy.” Ruby smacked her lips. “I want more.”
“Let’s get this done then,” I said.
Forest came into the kitchen with our wineglasses as well as the bottle. “What can I do?” He poured more wine into our glasses. I wish I could say to myself that I hadn’t noticed the way his butt looked in his dark jeans or the expanse of his chest in the cobalt-blue sweater, but that would have been a lie. He’d shaved his stubble, giving him a more youthful and less cantankerous countenance. I averted my gaze. This was not the man to play with.
“Would you like to fill a pot with water for the pasta?” I asked. “I’ll put the meatballs in the oven.” I’d already formed them earlier and they were in the mudroom, which I’d noticed was considerably colder than the kitchen.
“Will do,” Forest said. “Even I know how to boil water.”
“Except for that time it spilled all over the stove,” Ruby said.
Forest shot her a dark look. “That was not my fault. Moxie had a bunny in her mouth and had brought it in here,” he said to me. “Very distracting.”
“All the blood,” Ruby said in a fatalistic tone.
Moxie raised her head and sniffed the air but seemed to find nothing interesting and went back to resting.
“What can I do?” Dane asked.
“Where do you have holiday meals?” I asked. There were seats at the island where I suspected they all ate on an ordinary day. This, however, was Christmas Eve, and should be special.
“In there.” Dane pointed to the dining room. A dark wood table had been decorated with a red liner and festive centerpiece. They’d hoped for guests, I thought. Empty nesters without family for the first time in years, or maybe a honeymoon couple or two. Instead, they had only me. I had to do my best to make this a wonderful holiday for them. If I could figure out how to pay Forest’s mortgage on this place without hurting his pride, I was going to do it. What good was all my money if I couldn’t help people like Forest and these kids?
“Would you like to set the table?” I asked Dane.
A pang made my chest ache for a split second. This was no more real than the Christmas sets I’d acted on over the years. I couldn’t get attached to this family the way I did with the casts of whatever show or movie I was doing at the time. They’d often become temporary families, but when the show ended and we all had to move on, we inevitably lost touch other than an occasional text or call.
I went out to the mudroom to get my meatballs and put them in the oven. Forest had gotten plates and silverware out, and Dane was dutifully placing them on the table. Ruby had climbed up on one of the stools and was watching the pasta water. Steam from the water curled wisps of fine hair at the base of her neck and over her forehead.
“A watched pot never boils,” I said.
“Really?” Ruby’s eyes widened.
I laughed and exchanged an amused look with Forest. “No, not really. It’s just a saying.”
“Do you mind if we use paper napkins?” Forest asked me. “The cloth ones are for when we have guests. They’re maddening to iron.”
“Holly is our guest,” Dane said.
Forest smacked the heel of his hand playfully against his forehead. “Yes, she is. It’s not typical that a guest is doing all the work, though. Should I feel guilty?” He took a generous sip from his wine. The flush in his cheeks betrayed his buzz. I liked relaxed Forest. He must not have many evenings like this. A home-cooked meal, no job to go to, a stellar bottle of wine. And me. Did he like having me here?
No, you ninny. He’s having a nice time. The only contribution I was making was providing a decent meal. My value was in the service I provided. Hadn’t that been my role all my life?
“No reason to feel guilty,” I said. “I’m happy to be with people, and I love to cook.”
“Where’s your family?” Dane asked.
“I don’t have any.” Explaining the toxic relationship with my mother to an eight-year-old wouldn’t have been appropriate.
“Well, tonight, we’re it,” Forest said. “We’re happy you’re here with us.”
“Thank you. That means a lot.” My eyes stung. I turned my back to them, busying myself with the dirty bowl in the sink.
“Holly doesn’t have a stocking,” Ruby said, sounding worried. “And will Santa know she’s here?”
“Don’t worry about Santa.” Having gotten control of my emotions, I turned back to them. “He always knows where we are.”
“For sure.” Forest plucked Ruby from the stool and twirled her in a circle.
Ruby squealed just as the water boiled on the stove.
“Maybe it is true that a watched pot never boils,” I said as I dumped an entire packet of spaghetti into the pot.
“Uncle Forest, you made me miss it,” Ruby said.
“We should put Christmas music on.” I used a wooden spoon to stir the pasta in the pot. “Make it even more festive.”
Forest set Ruby down on the top of the island and pulled out his phone. We all cheered when “Run Rudolph Run” came through the speakers. “I love this one.” I waved the wooden spoon in time to the music.
Forest grabbed me around the waist. I dropped the spoon on the counter. “Would you care to dance, Ms. Turner?”
“Um, all right.”
He grinned down at me as he wrapped one arm around my waist and took my hand in his empty one and danced me around the kitchen. Surprisingly light on his feet for a guy with his bulk, we made a full circle around the island. I had one arm firmly around his strong neck. His muscular frame dwarfed my small one. Damn, it felt so good to be in a man’s arms. A strong, steady man. This was the real thing, not some fake action star. He dipped me at the end of the song, making me bubble with laughter.
